


Is it Wrong to Pick Up Boys in a Dungeon?

by abbeytre3



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: M/M, but more rpgish, kind of like the gamer, michael cheats the system to get his boi happy and healthy, michael's life is now a video game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2018-12-25 08:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12032157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbeytre3/pseuds/abbeytre3
Summary: Michael's life gets turned upside down when he finds himself the protaganist of a video game. The only problem, is that life is not meant to be programmed. Yeah, tell that to the Squip.





	1. Tutorial

“I can’t believe I blew my bar mitzvah money on a wintergreen tictac!”

Michael slowly crunched on his nachos as Jeremy bemoaned acting like a sucker. The air above Jeremy’s head flickered and words in 8 bit font appeared.

_Jeremy Heere Lvl. 3_

_The Squip Lvl. ???_

Michael tilted his head and squinted at the words. Then he took off his glasses, and cleaned them, now staring at the extremely blurry words. They refused to go away. He shoved his nachos away and lent over the table, waving his hands in the air above Jeremy’s head. The words stayed.

“Um Michael? What’s up buddy?” Jeremy stared at him, face scrunched up adorably in confusion.

“I’m” Michael waved his arms again through the floating text, “Trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“I’m pretty sure what’s going on is my misery! How am I supposed to afford the remaster of Apocalypse of the Damned now?!”

Michael huffed an annoyed sigh at his oblivious friend and sat back down. The words could be anything! A weed hallucination! Anything!

He picked up a nacho and pointed the cheesy goodness at his best friend, “We could always get jobs you know. Then you could afford your own stuff rather than just living high off of your dwindling money stash.”

Jeremy slumped on the table, “Thanks.” He smiled across the table at Michael, who felt his heart skip a beat.

“For what?” Michael stuffed the nacho in his mouth to distract himself from the burgeoning warmth in his chest.

“For distracting me. You know I’ve never, I can’t do something strange to cheer someone up. But you just… were you and now I feel better. Not having my four hundred bucks back better, but a having you better.”

Ignoring the pink crawling across his cheeks with great ease, having six years of practice, Michael flicked his eyes from Jeremy back to the words and then around to the other shoppers, some who were surreptitiously eyeing him. Then it hit him. No one else could see the text.

The question marks started rotating in midair as Jeremy’s eyes grew wide. As he let out a pained moan, Michael jumped to his friend’s side, ignoring the spinning marks that settled into the number _200_.

“Jeremy? J-Jeremy?!”

Jeremy started to wail, thrashing out of his seat as pain wracked his body. He yelped, “M-mild?!”

After a few agonizing seconds where all Michael could do was stare in horror and restrain Jeremy from smacking against the floor, Jeremy fell silent and limp. He slurred, “I’m alright. Just a little pain. All goo—ArgH!”

Jeremy let out one more shuttered yell and suddenly lurched out of Michael’s grasp and staggered away from the table. Letting the still steaming plate of nachos go abandoned, Michael hurried behind Jeremy, watching him argue with thin air, or as the air flickered above, raining the level from 200 to 201, The Squip.

Jeremy’s face twisted, flinching back as if he’d been slapped. Michael, standing to the side of him, reached up and gently gripped Jeremy’s shoulder. The boy jumped and whipped around to stare at Michael, hair in even more of a disarray, breathing labored, face flushed.

“Hey, what are they saying to you? It doesn’t seem like anything good.”

Jeremy looked down and wrapped his arms around his middle, looking off to the side. In a sardonic voice, he repeated,  in a not quite mocking tone, “E-everything about me is terrible. Everything about me makes him want to die.”

Michael demanded, a white hot flame of fury shooting through him, “Who?! Because that’s not what something that is supposed to help you would say!”

“Keanu Reaves. I mean the Squip.” Jeremy muttered, “He’s probably just making and honest assessment.”

With a sick feeling of revulsion for this _thing_ (Jeremy couldn’t really believe that?), Michael aggressively bit back, “And he’s known you for three seconds!”

Jeremy recoiled, sinking into himself, “He has access to my memories. So he could be right…”

Reaching out with his other hand, Michael raised Jeremy’s chin so that they were making eye contact, and released hi. With as serious face as he could muster, Michael crossed his arms and squared his shoulders, “This Squip is a serious piece of shit. If this continues, it won’t make you cool, it’ll remake you into something you’re not. And I can’t lose my Player 2.”

Michael’s vision became obscured by a floating light green text box

_Mission Objective Complete_

_Make Heere Hear 1/2_

_500 exp pts_

_Continue?_

Peering around the edges of the text box, he was met with the grey visage of Jeremy. Actually, looking around, everything was grey. A child was frozen in mid-skip, the escalators stood stock still as were the people on it. The background hum of the mall had fallen silent, and Michael suddenly felt very alone.

He walked out of the secluded corner and looked over the balcony of the food court, As far as he could see, he was the only one moving. Michael mused in a strained voice, “Is it okay to freak out now? Because I’m kind of freaking out.” Taking a deep breath Michael sat on a bench and repeated himself, “I’m in a video game. I’m in a video game.” Then yelled, “Why is this happening to me!” It echoed around the dead silent mall eerily. Walking back to Jeremy, Michael stared hard at the green sign, the only hint of color in the dull world he found himself.

In a shaky breath, Michael said, “Jeremy needs me,” and tapped the continue button. Life flooded back into the mall as he was snapped back into his previous position.

A thinner box appeared in the corner of his eye,

_Level Up!_

_HP up by 5_

_10 Skill Points_

As Jeremy chewed over Michael’s words.

Head ducking, looking up at Michael from underneath his lashes, Jeremy looked much too vunerable for his liking. Jeremy should be happy, laughing, confident, not torn down by some puffed up supercomputer.

In the introduction phase too! What fucked up program thought that was how to behave? If this is how it acted, how would its advice be any better?

After just looking for a long moment, Jeremy started talking, “I guess I can trust you more than a computer…” He cracked a smile, “If cheat codes exist the computers can’t be right all the time.”

Michael grinned toothily, “Yeah that’s right. I program them, not the other way around.”

Jeremy reached for Michael but pulled back sharply as something shocked him. He watched as a health bar appeared, flashed red, fell a fraction, and faded away.

With the smile now brittle and slightly pained, Jeremy asked, “I’m kind of exhausted. There’s a lot I have to go over. Do you think you could just drop me off at home?”

Michael replied, “Yeah no problem” as the world went grey again.

 

_Mission Objective Complete_

_Make Heere Hear 2/2_

_850 exp pts_

_Continue?_

Now irritated, Michael punched the button and gritted his teeth as his arm was reset.

The two of them made their way down to the PT Cruiser in silence, Michael resolutely refusing to look to his right, where the one, now three, announcements were waiting to be dismissed.

Brooke and Chloe passed them, Brooke looking back curiously. Jeremy noticed and made a chocking noise, hunching his shoulders and speeding up to put Michael between them.

Michael grinned to himself, this boy would never change.


	2. Tutorial: Learning the Settings

In retrospect, perhaps leaving Jeremy alone with a malicious wintergreen tic tac for a whole weekend wasn’t the most brilliant of plans. But as Michael drove home, he was a bit distracted by the four levels he gained in the driving skill.

All he did was follow the law and that was apparently enough the jump the first few levels. Every time he leveled up he seemed to jerk to wheel less, stay more centered in the lane, drive smoother. If there wasn’t something giving him a calming effect behind the wheel, Michael would’ve been freaking out from the changes in his behavior that was not _him_. Something was messing with his brain, his life, and he didn’t like it. Michael had three goals, get stoned, get Jeremy, get through high school. He didn’t need a crisis on top of that.

Parking the car the straightest its ever been, Michael jumped out of the car and fumbled with his keys, watching a bar labeled ‘coordination’ tick up and disappear.

As soon as his feet hit the pavement, all of his anxiety hit him like an eighteen-wheeler. Michael clutched his chest as his heart started thundering, staggering towards his house. Stepping through the doorway, a little map popped up in the bottom corner of his eye. His vision was getting rather crowded actually. Screwing his eyes shut, Michael took deep breaths and willed himself to calm down. He just needed to dismiss the messages. Then he could either pretend that everything was normal, or he could experiment, see how far this went.

He could feel his speeding heart recede into a light throb, thudding away calmly. Opening his eyes, he bit his lip, looked around the entranceway, and seeing no one, said a loud, “Settings.”

He felt a bit stupid waiting for something to happen, when color suddenly seeped out of the house and was coated with shades of grey.

A large green text box popped up in front of his face, vindicating him. Each status had a button next to it, to expand into further tabs supposedly.

Michael went to go sit on the stairs, and the menu followed him. He flicked through the tabs,

_Character/ Inventory/ Settings/ Exit_

And settled on settings. The screen flickered and blossomed into a new box full of sliders and checkboxes.

HE muttered angrily, “Well that explains a lot,” when his eyes reached

_Difficulty: Hard_

_Cheat Codes: Disabled_

Reaching up, he fiddled with the sliding difficulty bar. He bumped it up to expert, before snorting and swiped all the way to the left, leaving it on easy. He also tapped the box for cheat codes, enabling them.

Smirking, Michael shouted at the ceiling, “Come at me bro!”

The screen dissolved before popping back up on the character screen. His stat, luck which was already low, dropped another point.

Michael scowled, “Dick.” And investigated the rest of the screen.

_Player 1_

_‘Michael Mell’_

_Lvl. 8_

_HP 345/345_

_MP 200/240_

_Strength: 40_

_Intelligence: 84_

_Wisdom: 79_

_Luck:24_

_Charisma: 8_

“Ouch,” Michael winced at that charisma skill. He supposed he wasn’t the most… social. But doesn’t having a twelve year old successful friendship count for something?

He had forty eight stat point to spend though. So he could always improve that. Michael briefly considered dumping all of his points into _Charisma_ , then reconsidered. Then reconsidered that reconsideration.

“I have plenty more levels. And I am only level eight, I should have until level fifteen before it gets harder to level up. Ah what the hell.”

Michael held down the arrow button for charisma and poured all of his point into _Charisma. Wisdom_ dropped a point. “Motherf—!!”

_Strength: 40_

_Intelligence: 84_

_Wisdom: 78_

_Luck: 24_

_Charisma: 56_

Michael was just about to rage quit when he accidently brushed his hand against inventory. It was understandably empty, but what caught his eye was the smaller, chibi version of him rotating, with equipped items listed on the side in little boxes. Michael curiously tapped on his jeans and an information box popped up with details.

_Worn Blue Jeans_

_Bought for Player One in 9 th grade. Unattractively baggy._

_-2 Attractiveness_

_-4 Charisma_

“Dang that actually stings. This game doesn’t pull punches.” Michael looked down self-consciously at his jeans and picked at the hole on the knee. They were getting old…

_Red Hoodie_

_This hoodie used to be insanely huge in middle school but due to the wonders of puberty, fits well. Littered with patches._

_+2 Gay_

_+4 Social Awareness_

_-2 Charisma_

Michael laughed nervously at the description and rubbed the pride patch on his sleeve. “It’s not that obvious, is it? Like, I don’t think I’m completely out to Jeremy even. He still asks me what girl I have a crush on ever since I told him that I like someone. Will you ever stop playing games?” The screen flickered and disappeared, returning everything to its natural hues. Michael took that as a no.


	3. The Quest Begins

Over the weekend, Michael gained experience in studying, video games, and completed a small relationship quest for taking the trash out. Something the game didn’t note, but Michael certainly did, is that he received zero text messages or halfhearted nervous calls from the best friend in residence.

It hurt a bit, but after getting something implanted in his brain, he could see how Jeremy might be a little distracted. It’s not like he won’t see him in school right? And, honestly, he had a little bit on his plate at the moment.

Selecting the easy difficulty suddenly made everything, simple. His math homework alone seemed like third grader’s problems and he was pretty sure that he was in calculus! It was getting a little boring, everything being so easy, but he hadn’t hit the wonders of high school yet. It might be boring when he was by himself but Michael was sure the real test would come facing those npcs. Not, not that he didn’t think of them as real people, but with this video game thing going on, it was fun to think of himself as the protagonist and everyone else as side characters, if even only to try to rationalize the changes in his life.

Parking his car, Michael slid out and nodded to a few kids, who waved back and carried on their way. He froze, why did he do that? He didn’t know those kids, and they definitely had no idea who he was. A new bar appeared to the upper left of his eye.

_Popularity 2%_

It ticked up to three and greyed out, becoming translucent. With that new bar, Michael now had three to four things in his vision at any time. The constantly updating map, the little notification boxes, names and levels above everyone’s head (ranging from Jeremy’s level three to the average ten to fifteen), and now this. Before he could ponder the bar further, the world paused, something he was quite used to by now. Two large boxes popped up on top of each other.

Quest boxes.

_Make Heere See_

_Jeremy is blinded by his desire. Slap some sense into him._

_Rewards:_

_1500 exp pts_

_Cheat Code_

_Accept?  Reject?_

It had to do with Jeremy. Michael felt incredibly stupid. He left that boy alone the whole weekend! He would bet his life that Jeremy’s low self esteem let that computer talk him into something. He frustratedly banged his fist on _Accept_. It faded away to reveal

_Player 2_

_Life’s a two-player game. Add someone to your party._

_Rewards:_

_300 exp pts_

_Accept?  Reject?_

That floored Michael. His hand hovered the _Accept_ button as he pondered this new development. _He could add people to his party._ Other people could see what he did! Jeremy could be a part of this! Kid would get a kick out of everything, Michael was sure.

He tapped the button and continued into the school. More students waved at him and his arm automatically moved to respond as his _Social Awareness_ skill ticked up and _Popularity_ plopped behind.

A person brushed past him and jostled Michael. He turned to see a brunette mop striding past.

“Oh hey! Jeremy!” Jeremy continued walking. Well fine, he knew what would get him out of his head, “Player 2!”

A text box popped up in the pause.

_Add Jeremy Heere to your party?_

_Accept?  Reject?_

Michael didn’t hesitate and tapped _Accept_.

The hallway flashed red and a neon red box blared into existence.

_Error 204_

_Enemy cannot be added to party_

_Dismiss?_

He hit dismiss to stop the blaring and his ears were left ringing in the aftermath. And Jeremy was getting further away.

In a panic Michael shouted, “Stop! Pause! Jeremy!” in the grey still hallway. Michael turned around, taking in the frozen crowd, “I… can pause it myself? Holy crap.”

He jogged over to  Jeremy, his tag coming into focus.

_Jeremy Heere lvl 3_

_The Squip lvl 211_

A bucket of ice washed over him at the rapid level climbing of The Squip. Ten levels in two days…

The Squip… There’s something there. Michael took a look at the frozen Jeremy, the focused look in his eye and the Eminem t-shirt, and knew that something was different, but, “Jeremy could never be the enemy. But if The Squip is, everything is so much worse than I thought.”

Not just that was off though, next to Jeremy’s level indicator was a picture of an eye with a slash through it. The symbol for blindness… “Jeremy was weaving around everyone else fine. The only one he hit… was me? Ha can’t see me?”

The title of the quest suddenly made a sickening amount of sense.

Michael ruffled his hair and muttered something that he hoped would work. He was disgusted with grey, “Continue.”

He was flung backwards, between the students, and forced upright and into his previous position. Michael swallowed back the motion sickness and watched Jeremy disappear into a classroom.

He dejectedly made his way to calculus and was met with what he could only call a glitch. The room was darker than having the lights off, it was an inky blackness that encompassed the room, swallowing the desks that were supposedly still present. The sparks of light flitting through the room did nothing to provide illumination and seemed to be self-contained.

He took a step into the nothingness and the doorway vanished, leaving him alone in the dark. The lights stopped flickering and started flashing in tandem.

The floor underneath him lost firmness and Michael was in freefall. He was paralyzed, a scream lodged in his throat, as his mind raced as to why the game would wait until now to kill him, when he hit a seat, hard. He barely had time to adjust to the bright light streaming through his transition lenses before something forcibly slowed down his galloping heartbeat. He must be driving. This anomaly only affected him in vehicles. Eyes finally focusing, Michael almost broke through the false calm. The speedometer read about one hundred and ten miles per hour, and at the rate trees were whipping by, it was not broken.

A brick barrier appeared in the middle of the road and he smoothly changed lanes, thanking everything under the sun that he improved his driving skill to six over the weekend. Considering his current level cap was ten, he liked to think of himself as a decent driver.  

But not at a hundred miles an hour! Swerving around suddenly appearing obstacles, Michael refused to take his eyes off the road and hand off of the wheel. He came around a particularly brutal turn, the wheels screeching protestedly,  when he saw another person. The windshield lit up with a translucent display of three items. At the sight of a red shell, Michael could have murdered everything. He was playing a rip off Mario Cart!

He pushed the red shell so that his window was clear again and as he sped past the car, saw something blast into it and send it rolling over into a ditch. A deep male announcer shouted through the radio, “And that was Brooke Lohst! Down to last place! Oh she was doing so well too! Will she recover? Not this late in the race!”

Michael barely noticed passing through the finish line as his brain processed that _he had just hit a classmate with a bomb_.

“Michael Mell, finishing second! What an improvement. Perhaps our reigning speed king Dillanger should start getting a little worried, no?”

Was the last thing that he heard before the car faded away and back into the regular classroom with everyone packing up for the day. That shade of grey Michael was starting to hate way back, along with a green  notification panel,

_Calculus Minigame_

_Score: 2 out of 28_

_Good Job!_

_Reward:_

_Driving Wheel Patch(+2 Driving)_

_Cheat Code_

_Continue?_

Michael quickly raced through the message before dismissing it and racing over to Brooke.

“Look I am so sorry—”

She put a hand up, “No look it was my fault. Don’t apologize for doing well on the pop quiz! I should’ve known better than to have my phone out, you know how strict Mr. Mathis is.”

Brooke smiled at him and stepped out of the class, leaving him dumbfounded.

Pop quiz? All of his teachers loved pop quizzes, even gym. Even Gym!

Then he realized, “Oh no, that’s what all of my classes will be like.”

 


	4. Player 2 Added!

 

By the time the last bell rang, Michael was ready to hit the pause and take a nap. He had been chased, shot at, and his least favorite to date, played a demented version of Frogger. Through the games he had gained two more cheat codes, and failed one mini-game, he was sure to be haunted by that eighteen-wheeler barreling down on him. Bonus, he learned that he couldn’t die in mini-games.

Worn out Michael sat on the front steps of the school and waited out the stream of students flooding the parking lot.

“Mi-Michael?! Where’ve you been all day?”

Jeremy stood behind him, the blindness status not gone but faded.

As Michael stared at him, Jeremy’s face scrunched up in confusion as he mouthed, “Optic Nerve Blocking?”

He stood up and brushed past Jeremy, jarring his shoulder into him, as he interrupted what must have been another pompous speech by the squip, “Blindness. You can’t see me. I-I can’t force you to keep me around. When you decide that you want me in your life,” Michael turned and caught Jeremy’s eyes, “I’ll _always_ be here for you.”

Michael walked down the steps in into the now empty parking lot, heart sinking lower with every step without a call from Jeremy. When he looked over his shoulder, the boy wasn’t there anymore. Michael bit back a ragged breath that sounded too wet for his liking and fumbled with his keys through clouded vision.

“Hey, like, that was really brave of you. If Chloe ever started ignoring me I don’t know if I’d be able to give her that choice you did. But um, I noticed that you always do all of the group work assignments by yourself and um, if you ever want a partner, I’m here!”

Michael sniffled and turned. A girl hiding her face behind flowing blonde locks scuffed the tip of her shoe against the gravel and with a jolt Michael realized that it was _Brooke_. One of the most popular girls in school saw his best friend break up with him and she wasn’t running to drown him in public humiliation! She looked up at him, still waiting for an answer, and Michael started to think that she might actually be genuine.

“Yeah uh, it might be nice to have a partner. It seems I’m in the market for a new Player 2.”

_Add Brooke Lohst to your party?_

_Accept?  Reject?_

Michael pushed the Accept button and watched carefully as a box popped up in front of Brooke.

“Wait what?” escaped him when he saw her carefully read the words and press Accept on her end.

She blinked and pushed her hair out of her face, looking around as if seeing the world with changed eyes. She nodded once, “Well… this is very cool.” She turned to him with a grave face, “How do you stand to play games with shitty graphics when your life is literally a game?”

She was taking this very calmly. Too calmly. Michael needed time to think a strategy for when she began to freak out. He shouted, “Pause!”

The world greyed out but Brooke… remained in full color. Oh god. Michael was the one freaking out. Why was he freaking out! Brooke should be freaking out! This wasn’t fair!

The quest box popped up and was dismissed by Brooke, the experience points going to both of them as she watched him bemused.

“You’re very new to this aren’t you? I figured something was going on. The two of you have been acting different all day. I like to watch both of you because you act like you’re the only two who exist and I live for your secret handshake! I really envy your friendship and thought that it was weird that you would give it up so easily.” She smiled slyly, “Something huge is going on, and I intend to help you figure it out.” She turned around in a circle and laughed, “Oh my god this is just so cool!”

She was enjoying this. She thought that this was _cool_. A smile tugged at Michael’s lips. He leaned back against his cruiser, “Oh my god. Brooke, are you a neerd?” he sang.

Brooke grinned, “Only when it comes to digimon. It’s the only reason I own a PS Vita.” She rubbed her hands together and started motioning, “We’re stuck in a video game, Jeremy is suddenly someone new, cute but new, and you can sing. Omg that’s three things… Illuminati confirmed.”

Michael raised an eyebrow, “Does Chloe know that you are a memer?”

Brooke paled, “Uh no, and you better not tell her or I will murder you with my batman bottle opener!” She quickly changed the subject, “What else can you do? Are there dungeons? Please tell me there’s dungeons.”

He pulled up the settings menu, “There’s this? And I don’t think so? I mean, I’ve only been to the mall and my house, so not to my knowledge. But tests are mini-games from hell!”

Brooke flipped through the menu settings quickly, settling on a tab he hadn’t seen before, labeled _Replay_. “Huh I wonder what’s this for? Info.”

To both of their surprises a box popped up,

_Retake any mini-games to get a higher score_

_Cannot reclaim prizes_

“Is this telling me I can retake a test? I totally bombed math and mom will kill me if I come home with that score. Sounds neat!”

She selected _Calculus_ and faded out of existence. Michael waited, frozen, a split second before she appeared, hair askew and winded. “Michael what. The. Hell!” She threw her hair over her shoulder, “That was amazing! Completely weird and thrilling and scary and exhilarating!” She screamed, “I’m in a video game!”

She raised a finger, and said “Continue.”

The world righted itself and Brooke just shook off the reset, somehow already adjusted and maybe more adept at the video game life than Michael was.

Brooke bounded over and slid herself into the passenger seat. She looked at Michael questionably, “What are you waiting for? Let’s go find a dungeon! Let’s grind levels! Let’s explore! Everything is different now!”


	5. Killer Quest!

 

“You have cheat codes?!” Brooke screeched as she bounced in her seat. Michael instinctively threw out an arm to brace her back in her seat as he made a quick right turn.

“Um yeah?” he questioned as he barreled down the highway, safely of course, the game wouldn’t have him doing it any other way.

Brooke with her feet up on the dash, and slouched in her seat as she flicked through the menu for the thousandth time, stared at him. He felt a sliver of red crawl up his neck self-consciously.

Her voice was incredulous, “And you _haven’t_ checked them out yet? You can literally break life as we know it, more than this game has already done, and you’re just sitting on your ass about it?”

Michael snapped back, ire rising through the calm of driving, “I was a little busy breaking up with Jeremy alright!”

Brooke fell silent, muttered to herself, “Break up with?” And then sat up straight in her seat, adjusted her clothing, and laid a gentle hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I think we need to pull over. We’re going to have a _talk_.”

A shiver crawled down Michael’s spine at the dreaded word _talk_ , he didn’t want to _talk,_ he wanted to stew in indignant sorrow. But regardless, he signaled and pulled over on the shoulder of the New Jersey highway, turning his hazards on but shutting the engine down, the calm lifting off of him and gloom settling over. _Jeremy didn’t want him. Twelve years of friendship and Jeremy wouldn’t even fight a demented computer for him._

A seatbelt snapped and Michael turned to see Brooke staring resolutely at him, “What?”

She shrugged, “You really love Jeremy right? Normal friends have fights, you guys _break up_. I mean, I made out with Jeremy and he enjoyed it, so I have a tiny feeling that he has no idea that you have _feelings_. Now this video game thing is very weird, but it’s cool. And you know that I know that it has something to do with Jeremy. What happened to the nervous sweaty kid and why is he so chill now?”

Michael mumbled, “It’s from Japan. It’s a grey oblong pill…”

Brooke squinted, “What?”

He rubbed his eyes, “Look, there’s gotta be something… is there a Quest Log or Character Bio sheets or something?”

Two large windows popped up between them, supposedly the Quest Log first, and a sheet with pictures and descriptors on top of it. Michael clicked on a picture of Jeremy and his page ballooned to fill the whole screen. His bio was ridiculously long, everything Michael knew about the boy, and not exactly everything he was willing to share with Brooke yet, some things stayed between childhood friends, so he scrolled down to attributes. Jeremy had gained a level in the past day, now being the still rather low level 4, but under Party Members, was a Keanu Reaves looking figure, handsome in the sharpest way.

Brooke leaned over and tapped on the picture but all that popped up was

_The Squip_

_Lvl 223_

_??? ???_

_Origin: Japan_

She mused, “I’ve never seen this guy before, but it says that he hangs around Jeremy a lot?”

“He’s in his head.”

“What?” she deadpanned.

“The squip. Jeremy took a pill that implanted a supercomputer into his brain and it manifested into this mean Keanu sonofabitch.”

She nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, “That’s crazy. What’s even crazier is his level. I mean you’re at level 8, and I thought I was doing well at level thirteen, but two hundred and twenty three? How do we beat that?”

Michael nodded and paused, “Wait we?”

She grinned, “I’m in your party dude. We’re all in this together.” She began tapping through the character screen until she reached a new page _Connections_. His friendship with Jeremy was at 86% and dropped to 85% as he was staring at it. Just watching the numbers ticking down made him want to cry again.

Brooke pointed to the only other connection in the friend list, her bio outlined in green, “I think the green means that we’re grouped together, look, I bet being on an active party makes friendship grow faster, just like in Digimon.” As she talked their bar tipped another fraction into 5%. “The bars seem to be different for each category,” She hit a new tab _Enemies,_ “Rich is at 32% and this Squip guy is at 57%, and they sure aren’t friend material, for you at least.”

She was about to flip back to the _Friend_ tab when Michael closed the whole window, not being able to bear seeing his falling apart friendship be represented with cold numbers.

He pulled up the most recent open Quest and showed Brooke, “See it say _Make Heere See_ , but I _can’t_. He doesn’t want to.”

She read the description and groaned. “Oh my god Michael you missed your chance. You play a lot of shooters don’t you?”

“Um yeah?”

She shook her head mock forlornly, “Well in adventure based RPG’s, often the answer to the quest will be humorously hinted at in the descriptor. You said the chip is in his brain right? Well I bet you have to literally slap some sense into him to get to him without the thing talking in his ear.”

Michael stared at her, “What.”

She rolled her eyes, “You have to hit the boy Michael. It’s not that difficult a concept, I’m sure you want to.” She unlocked the doors and hopped out, leaning abck in when he remained in his seat, “Now are we going to get lost in the woods somewhere in New Jersey? Because I’m itching for a killer quest!”


	6. Lost in the Borderlands

Michael looked around at his grayscale hellscape. It wasn’t like the pause menu, all soft grey and calm, frozen. Everything was still moving, but muffled, grey with a pulsing red outlining his vision. The blood in his ears pounded harder as he struggled to read the title of the meter that was quickly losing its green color.

_Revive by getting a kill_

_40 sec left!_

He sluggishly reached for his inventory, taking what was possibly his last chance at life into his hands and hurling the open container at the level fifteen serpent.

Michael had done chores over the weekend. And occasionally those chores required cleaning, so instead of hauling things like Clorox wipes and the vacuum cleaner around, he just handily stored them in his inventory. The serpent ate the wipes, and the vacuum cleaner lay snapped in half, still in the serpent’s lazily coiled tail.

It hadn’t seen them as a threat, with its level, it shouldn’t have had to. But when Michael splashed a gallon of bleach into its gaping maw, well now it was hurt, and pissed. A little skull appeared below its health bar and as the green bar ticked into red, Michael realized he had poisoned it. But it was too slow, he had seconds left, and fell to the ground, barely feeling the twigs crushed beneath his body.

Through narrowed eyes, not being able to keep them fully open any more, he saw Brooke slam a branch down on its head. One of the outcroppings of the branch speared its eye, plummeting its HP to zero and splattering Brooke with fluid.

The world cleared, color rushed in, and Michael could breathe again. The text replaced itself with icy text,

_Second Wind!_

“So Brooke, how are we going to insult the next talking snake?”

Brooke dismissively waved her hand, “Look loot! And skills!”

The monster had disappeared, leaving behind a pile of goods, two glowing sticks labeled _2000 XP_ , a stack of money, and an assortment of random goods.

A notification had also popped up for Michael

_Potion Making Skill_

_I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death_

“I got potions, what’d you get?” Michael flipped through the bills, $3500 dollars, nice, and handed half to Brooke. As soon as he made the transaction the bills disappeared and his total amount flashed briefly before fading.

“Blunt object modification. I get a bonus for wielding something in that class.” Brooke picked up a staff just shorter than her with a slightly spiky end, “I guess this could work.” She waved it around experimentally, when a spurt of fire shot out of the tip, landing a 250 scorch damage to a nearby defenseless tree. Her face lit up in maniacal joy, “This will definitely work!” She glanced back down to the pile and tossed a couple of poison packets into Michael’s inventory, as well as one of the exp sticks.

He started, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You’ll never know until you try.” She said mysteriously, then cackled, “I read the FAQ on the way here.”

“The what?”


End file.
